I tell you piano the things I used to tell you

It is dreadful when something weighs on your mind, not to have a soul to unburden yourself to. You know what I mean. I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.

My emotions are expressed through the piano. It’s easier to speak through the keys than through words.

Well, you know I used to play piano for the church. You know that spiritual, 'Give Me that Old Time Religion', most churches just say, [sings] "Give me that old time religion" but I did, [sings] "Give me that old time, talkin' 'bout religion," you know I put that little thing in it you know, I always did have that thing but I didn't know what to do with the thing I had. So the style has always been with me... I always had my little thing I wanted to let the world hear, you know.

And with a relentlessness that comes from the world's depths, with a persistence that strikes the keys metaphysically, the scales of a piano student keep playing over and over, up and down the physical backbone of my memory. It's the old streets with other people, the same streets that today are different; it's dead people speaking to me through the transparency of their absence; it's remorse for what I did or didn't do; it's the rippling of streams in the night, noises from below in the quiet building.

I feel like screaming inside my head. I want to stop, to break, to smash this impossible phonograph record that keeps playing inside me, where it doesn't belong, an intangible torturer. I want my soul, a vehicle taken over by others, to let me off and go on without me. I'm going crazy from having to hear. And in the end it is I – in my odiously impressionable brain, in my thin skin, in my hypersensitive nerves – who am the keys played in scales, O horrible and personal piano of our memory.

how dismal it is to have no one to go to in the morning to share one’s griefs and joys; how hateful when something weighs on you and there’s nowhere to lay it down. You know to what I refer. I often tell to my pianoforte what I want to tell to you.

When I pass a piano anywhere, I have to touch it or play it.

I dreamt of you last night - as if I was playing the piano and you were turning the pages for me.

My life has been guided by an unseen piano player, who is actually typing this now.

I'd tell you all you want and more, if the sounds I made could be what you hear

Grammar is a piano I play by ear.

I started writing hits the day I sold my piano.

The piano is always true to me. In times of despair, happiness, and joy, its mood is always my own.

I'm learning to play piano. And also the musical saw.